Elbow-Room eBook

The judge felt certain that her former owner didn’t
deceive him when he said her appetite was good.
She had hunger enough for a drove of cattle and a
couple of flocks of sheep. That day the judge
went after the butcher to get him to buy her.
When he returned with him, she had just eaten the
monkey-wrench and the screw-driver, and she was trying
to put away a fence-paling. The butcher said she
was a fair-enough sort of cow, but she was too thin.
He said he would buy her if the judge would feed her
up and fatten her; and the judge said he would try.
He gave her that night food enough for four cows, and
she consumed it as if she had been upon half rations
for a month. When she finished, she got up, reached
for the hired man’s straw hat, ate it, and then,
bolting out into the garden, she put away the honeysuckle
vine and a coil of India-rubber hose. The man
said that if it was his cow he would kill her; and
the judge told him that he had perhaps better just
knock her on the head in the morning.

During the night she had another attack of somnambulism,
and while wandering about she ate the door-mat from
the front porch, bit off all the fancy-work on top
of the cast-iron gate, swallowed six loose bricks
that were piled up against the house, and then had
a fit among the rose bushes. When the judge came
down in the morning, she seemed to be breathing her
last, but she had strength enough left to seize a
newspaper that the judge held in his hand; and when
that was down, she gave three or four kicks and rolled
over and expired. It cost the judge three dollars
to have the carcase removed. Since then he has
bought his butter and milk and given up all kinds of
live-stock.

CHAPTER X.

OUR CIVIL SERVICE.

Some of the public officers of Millburg are interesting
in their way. The civil service system of the
village is based upon the principle that if there
is any particular function that a given man is wholly
unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform
it. The result is that the business of our very
small government goes plunging along in the most surprising
manner, with a promise that it will end some day in
chaos and revolution—­of course upon a diminutive
scale.

A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman
of the town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is
to light the street-lamps. It is an operation
which does not require any very extraordinary effort
of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the
mind of Mr. Bones did not seem to be equal to the
strain placed upon it by this duty. It was observed
that whenever there were bright moonlight nights Mr.
Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in
the evening until dawn, while upon the nights when
there was no moon he would not light them at all,
and the streets would be as dark as tar. At last
people began to complain about it, and one day one
of the supervisors called to see Mr. Bones about it.
He remarked to him,